by Satoshi Hase
When the train entered Shizuoka, nothing but mountains and trees spread as far as the eye could see.
Suddenly, Arato saw a pillar of light fall, far off where the Pacific Ocean lay. It was a microwave beam, shot from one of the geosynchronous energy satellites through a relay satellite to the receiving station on Earth. The microwaves in the beam were tightly regulated, so they didn’t actually give off light to the naked eye. Instead, the elevated cover the train was running under caught light from weak waves reflecting off the receptor.
Since Shizuoka was the site of a nuclear reactor that had broken down during the great Tokai earthquake, it was the ideal spot to create the first energy receiving station in Japan. Japan’s energy needs were covered with all types of energy-generating methods, scattered across the country. The night view had become a little more lonely than the views of past Japan that Arato saw in videos, but the energy requirements of computers and signal relays had become quite large.
An information display on the monitor in Arato’s window told him that Shizuoka utilized special cultivation techniques and its long history of tea-making to produce large amounts of artificial tea leaves. Bright lights illuminated a recreation field where workers were playing soccer. Industries tied to human survival were manned by humans. That way, even if all the machines broke down, human society would still have the food and water it needed to survive. That precaution was proof that the trust the country placed in machines and AI had its limits. All over the country, you could find people sympathetic with ideals like those of the Antibody Network.
Arato watched his country speed by outside the window of the train. When he thought about it, all the massive ruins he was seeing were tools built for human use. But, in the end, they had all been laid low by ever-expanding human activity.
“There is no need to worry. This world belongs to humans,” Lacia said from the next seat. “Humans will never relinquish direct control of systems related to their survival to high-performance AIs. Even fifty years after the birth of the first high-performance AI, they are still only used for research purposes, and are not allowed direct access to any networks.”
She reached forward and pulled out Arato’s table. The packed meal he’d ordered had arrived.
“Sure, for now,” Arato mused. “But what about in a hundred years?”
“In that much time, there will obviously be changes,” Lacia said. “It is up to you, Arato, and your kind, to decide what the result of those changes will be.”
Arato opened the packed meal, and steam from the grilled meat puffed out. Things had certainly changed in the last hundred years. Forget fish and vegetables, manmade beef and pork were now superior to the originals. Even eggs were better out of a bottle.
“As I said, this world belongs to you humans, so I think you should sit down and have a long talk with Ms. Shiori,” Lacia added.
“About what?” Arato asked.
“About her ‘indecent’ request,” Lacia said.
About the time Arato finished eating his meal, the lights outside his window were growing in number from business hotels and apartments.
〈We will arrive in Nagoya in five minutes.〉 The announcement rang through the train, and a fraction of the passengers stood up to disembark. The high-speed rail had arrived in the center of the city, surrounded by city signs.
It was Arato’s first time getting off of a train at Nagoya Station. That, plus the thought that he hadn’t even thought of the possibility that he might be going there that evening a few hours ago, made it feel like he had traveled quite far. Nagoya’s nightscape seemed far more human to Arato than it had appeared from the railway. Besides that, the average age was higher, and the number of hIEs was visibly less than in Tokyo. Thanks to all the fully automated vehicle rental places in Tokyo, the taxi industry had all but died out. In Nagoya, they were so abundant that the entire pick-up area in front of the station was full of them. The fifty-year-old buildings stuck out to Arato’s eyes, and the whole place was full of the vibrancy of life.
“The Tokai region has seen a population decline since the middle of the last century,” Lacia said. “As there were no new industries starting up, there was no need for new city developments.”
Arato flipped out his pocket terminal, but Lacia had already made preparations beforehand. “I have reserved an automatic vehicle in your name to take us to the Chubu International Airport,” she said. “Persons under the age of eighteen are prohibited from renting vehicles after 8:00 PM, so I arranged for the vehicle thirty minutes ago.”
The automated vehicle couldn’t enter the station front due to the crowd of taxis. According to Lacia’s guidance, they would have to walk for quite a ways to meet up with it.
“After this is all over, I’ll have to pick up some famous Nagoya goods before I head home,” Arato joked.
“It would be best to avoid any tourism,” Lacia responded seriously. “This region is a hot spot for Antibody Network activity.”
Arato hadn’t expected to hear that name there. “They’ve got those guys here, too?” he grumped.
“Groups like that aren’t confined to just Tokyo, or even just Japan,” Lacia responded. “There are similar groups throughout the world. Nearly half of any taxi company’s spending is on labor costs, yet here we see mostly human-driven taxis. This suggests that this area excludes hIEs from these jobs, despite it not making financial sense.”
The narrow street they were walking down seemed to grow more ominous in Arato’s eyes. With Lacia by his side, he felt like not getting close to any parking lots or abandoned facilities.
Once they reached the automated vehicle, he jumped in, and they drove off as if something was chasing them. They headed toward the Chubu International Airport, located along the Ise Bay on the Chita Peninsula. Their auto car zipped down the expressway with impressive speed. Unlike in Tokyo, there was no regulation in Nagoya making it a violation of the Road Traffic Act to drive a vehicle that wasn’t fully automated.
In the front passenger seat, Arato was overwhelmed by the luxurious interior, as well as the speed of the vehicle. “This thing isn’t fully automated, is it?” he asked.
“The Mercury Benz ES09 Automatic model has support for automated control,” Lacia explained. “There is no need to worry.”
Their speed climbed to over 200 km/h. Thanks to the same hacking prowess Lacia had used to instantly hack the car rental shop’s system, the cameras along their route, meant to capture speeding violations, couldn’t see them.
Lacia was at the wheel. “We needed a fast and durable vehicle, so I chose one,” she said simply.
The flight from Egypt would arrive at 8:30 PM. It had already been 8:00 PM when the express train had arrived at Nagoya. They didn’t have time to take it slow. Still, Arato couldn’t help but be a little freaked out by going so fast that every little bump in the road made it feel like the vehicle was flying off the ground.
“Hey, if we break this, will we be able to pay for it?” he asked.
“Please don’t worry,” Lacia said. “In the event of an accident, I have prepared six mon in old coins.”
“So I’m gonna die?”
Lacia’s dry joke referred to the fee used to pay for passage across the Sanzu River to enter the afterlife. The speedometer climbed over 300 km/h.
There weren’t any tall buildings around the road on the Chita Peninsula. Instead, the area was full of old farms and logistics centers for cargo from the bay. The Chubu International Airport had been turned into a 24-hour freight airport to support the Chubu area’s flagging economy. Since the construction of the space elevator in the latter half of the 21st century, the sea routes had become unstable in Southeast Asia, which led to many companies moving their logistics into the air. The Chubu Airport had prevented the area from sinking into economic decline when the sea shipping industry in the area had dried up.
Arato gazed at the scenery as it shot away behind him. They zipped by vehicles heading in the opposite dire
ction without slowing.
“If we were in this much of a hurry, we should have gone straight here from Shinkiba instead of heading toward home before turning around,” Arato moaned.
Something like a stone slammed into the white hood of the car, throwing the vehicle off balance. The nose began to swing violently left and right. The tires squealed as the automated system corrected itself. Arato was getting a very bad feeling about this.
“I am intercepting a transmission from a vehicle approximately one kilometer ahead. I will play it over the car’s speakers,” Lacia said.
Against a background of light static, a deep voice shook the air in the vehicle.
〈Mirai, is the Lacia-class moving?〉 It was a man’s voice that Arato had never heard before. Whoever it was, the person on the other end of Lacia’s ‘wiretap’ knew they were there.
A young girl’s voice responded. 〈She’s doing naughty things with her owner.〉
Neither voice seemed to be aware they were being eavesdropped on.
〈Shouldn’t we just shoot the owner? I mean, I’d feel bad for him, but still...〉 the female voice said. She was talking about Arato, who felt a sudden chill at the thought of some unknown person casually deciding whether or not to shoot him. The thing that had struck the front of the car just a moment ago had been a bullet.
Unconsciously, Arato looked to Lacia for help. “They’re aiming for me,” he said.
“We have been tailed since our conversation with Shiori Kaidai in the afternoon. Based on the transmissions I have intercepted, I can infer that orders were given to slow us down. Those responsible are currently driving near the interchange ahead. Shall I dispose of them?” Lacia asked.
‘Dispose.’ She said the word without emotion. Though the car was slowing down, nothing could slow the hammering of Arato’s heart. He felt like the rules of reality had somehow changed on him. But, with Lacia, he had the means for getting the power and information he needed to face this new reality in his hands.
“Don’t say ‘dispose of,’” he said. “All I need you to do is stop them from attacking.”
“Without my device, my capabilities are severely limited,” Lacia warned. Her abilities to turn invisible or fire projectiles were accomplished through transformations of her metal coffin. Without that Black Monolith, she was no longer omnipotent.
Around them, the lights of the residential district were dwindling, and being replaced by logistics centers and food factories. The only thing that stood out as well-maintained was the road for automatic vehicles, connecting Nagoya and the airport.
Arato wanted to run. His brain was telling him he should give up. But, he had already come this far. And, looking at Lacia’s profile as she controlled their vehicle at 200 km/h, he thought that wasn’t the only reason he wanted to keep going. In this automated world, he had gained the power to reach his own goals, and he could wield that power freely.
Their vehicle entered the Centrair Line route, and the night around Arato seemed wider than any sky he had seen before. The thrill of looking up at that sky awakened a feeling of desire, even in a good-natured guy like Arato. He wanted to see a future with Lacia by his side.
While perfectly controlling the vehicle, she turned to look at him expectantly, awaiting his orders. She didn’t want him to cling to her desperately, with worry in his eyes, but rather to show her a strong will, ready to seize the world with his own hands.
“Tell me. Who are these guys? How are we going to stop them?” he asked.
He had the strange feeling that Lacia smiled when she answered. “They are a private military company known as the ‘Hands of Operation,’” she explained. “When Japan re-armed itself, many posts in the old Self-Defense Force were restructured. Private military companies became a popular destination for SDF members let go during that time. HOO is a third-sector group, one of the PMCs started in Japan.”
“How do we get them to stop attacking?” he asked again in reply.
“Contracts from the Japanese government are the lifeline for all Japan-made PMCs,” Lacia responded. “To not lose their government support, they are required to stick to a strict code of ethics and refrain from any dangerous actions within the country.”
Their car approached a trailer truck in front of them on the road. Arato figured they would easily pass the truck but, instead, it accelerated until it was maintaining a distance of 200 kilometers between them.
“Arato, I will be exiting the vehicle, so please take care of the wheel while I’m out,” Lacia said. Then, she opened the driver’s side door. With the airtight cabin opened, the wind blowing by their speeding car howled.
On the other side of the windshield, Arato saw the truck still matching speed with them. The container door of the truck’s trailer opened. Two hIEs were standing inside. There was something in there with the two hIEs; something Arato thought should have still been back at his apartment. It was Lacia’s black device.
Before Arato even had time to be surprised, the hIEs dropped the black coffin from the back of the trailer.
“I will make contact with Black Monolith,” Lacia reported. The black device bounced off of the road with a sound like a bell being struck. Casting off sparks, it spun around as their vehicle headed straight for it. Lacia leaned as far as she could out of the driver’s side door, reaching out to grab the handle of the device as they passed by it. At the same time, the car’s course was jerked violently to the left.
Arato heard a dull popping noise from somewhere on the car, and clung to the wheel as the entire vehicle bounced up and down. The view through the windows was spinning sideways. Lacia’s upper half, dangling out of the car, was pushed up as the front portion of her device reformed itself and supported her until she could right herself.
In front of them, the trailer threw off sparks and lost its balance. It seemed to slide along the road for a moment, before turning over on its side. The huge body of the truck walled off the road in front of them.
Arato’s instincts had him slamming on the breaks. “I consider this a dangerous action!” he yelled. As far as last words go, it was pretty pathetic.
A light exploded in front of him, sending a wave of flame over the vehicle. The next moment, the car sped through the wrecked side of the trailer without slowing much at all.
As it rolled over large chunks of metal from the explosion, the front of the vehicle flew up. Arato felt them actually leave the ground. After less than a second of air time, they crashed back to the road. They had already gone well beyond the safety limits of the luxury vehicle. An impact tore the wheel from Arato’s grip, and he saw his life flash before his eyes.
Just as despair threatened to consume him, a white arm stretched out in front of his eyes. Lacia pushed the car back on course with her left hand, while her right held her black device, which had formed into a cannon.
She had used the device to blast a path for them through the fallen trailer. They hadn’t made it through quite unscathed, though; the front right portion of the Mercury Benz ES09 had completely crumpled.
Lacia returned her device to its coffin form and climbed easily up onto the roof of the car. The nose of the vehicle suddenly dipped, and Arato heard a metallic screech and saw sparks flying from the front right wheel. The cabin of the car filled with the smell of burning rubber and metal.
“You said we wouldn’t have to worry about money if we destroy this car, right?” he called out to Lacia. His stomach twisted as memories of being caught in the explosion as a child flickered behind his eyelids, and he felt like he was going to throw up.
Lacia had the device lock she always wore gripped tightly in her hands. After pulling it up to her mouth, she bit it open with her perfect white teeth. “I am afraid that information is incorrect. If we use all the remuneration we have received from Fabion MG, we will barely be able to cover this cost,” she replied.
Off in the distance, Arato saw the lights of a plane touching down. They were almost to the airport. Even as h
e looked ahead, a bullet pierced the front windshield, spreading a spider web of cracks around it.
“Get them to stop shooting!” he yelled.
As they picked up even more speed, Arato could make out the taillights of the PMC vehicles in front of them. One was a van, with its back door wide open. The soldier, Mirai, whom Arato had overheard earlier, was sitting in the back of the van sniping at him.
“Understood. I will disable the two PMC vehicles in front of us,” Lacia said, dragging her device easily down from where she had set it on the car roof.
With Arato and Lacia still hanging on, the car put out a further burst of speed. Their distance to the PMC vehicles ahead shrank to around 200 meters. Lacia’s device, which had changed forms again, shot out a burst of light. The next instant, the front PMC vehicle vanished from Arato’s sight. As if by magic, the entire car was gone, leaving only the ghostly screaming of its tires.
Delicately, Lacia steered the car around the invisible source of the screeching, altering their course just enough to pass the danger by. “I have rendered the PMC vehicle invisible using a meta-material bombardment,” she reported.
“Are they all right?” Arato shouted. He had to yell to keep his words from being drowned out in the wind whipping by as the Ise Bay spread out in front of them.
“By preventing visible light from entering the vehicle, I simply took away their vision,” Lacia said. “There were no casualties.”
Arato felt a shiver run up his spine. If he, as her owner, was frightened by the ease with which she dispatched the threat, he could only imagine the kind of monster she would appear to be to their opponents.
“I will now explain the plan,” Lacia said. “We will stop the vehicle within sniping range. I will then transform Black Monolith into its mass projectile mode. I will then snipe the ID number locations on Marina Saffron’s frame.”
The damaged front windshield began to display an image, probably captured from the security cameras within the airport. The target plane in the airfield was a large freight plane that ran on cheap but noisy bio-kerosene made from seaweed oil. It had already landed and stopped, and had its nose door opened so a container could be carried out.